When I visited the library of ISDL, I saw the article in Malayalam by T. Madhava Menon on Kerala Palama published in Bhasa Sahiti and read a few paragraphs. A quote from Gundert's Kerala Pajama has a verbending in are. This is a survival of the person-number-gender-ending of the verbis in Malayalam. So. I called for a copy of Kerala Palama which I got in a xeroxed form from Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan and read through. Nearly 125 instances of such verbs are found in that text which formed the subject matter of a note submitted to the 30th All India Conference of Dravidian Linguists at Dharwad, Karnataka,
Before that in the late 1960-s, when the Second World Conference of Tamill was held at Chennai, I read a keynote paper in which I mentioned that the practice of the elder brother taking to sanyasa and the younger member assuming kingship, is present in the Cochin family which is the opposite of what is noted in Cilappatikaram where the younger brother becomes a sanyasi and the elder brother becomes king. Dr K. Aiyappan who met me after the formal presentation, asked me where I have taken the information from. I said from K.M. Panikkar's 'History' published by Annamalal University. He said 'he is undependable'. 1 needed proof to the contrary: if not available, I will hold on to that rare information", these were my words. Kerala Palama is the source for K.M. Panikkar. Whether he has stated this in his book, I do not remember. I have repeatedly said that for the cultural and historical details found in Cilappatikaram, one has to look to Kerala. This needs stress, again and again to make the Malayalam literati realize that if they neglect old Tamil literature, they neglect at least one third of their literary wealth. That apart, Kerala Palama is fascinating for me for candidly noting the conventions in Kerala in the 17th century A.D., the untouchability, the inner life of the palace, the pretensions of the Portuguese and, above all, the infights of the minor kings and their overlords. A mine of information, besides linguistically-rich fare in preserving many archaic features by Gundert, is found in this write-up. More is the enjoyment when archaic features are found in abundance Mr T. Madhava Menon, on my request, has translated it into English, with abundant footnotes, for the benefit of non-Malayalam readers. The translation is absorbing.
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